Saturday, 11 March 2017

Pikeman's Lament

We had our first game of Pikeman's Lament on Thursday. Great game.

My friend forgot to bring his figures or rules (he said something about getting ready for Twickenham on Saturday!). But we made do with my Wars of Roses stuff. The armies were taken from the list put on the website by Michael Leck, one of the authors. We used 30 years war Swedes and Imperialists. The game was a blast though we were learning as we went along. The big power units were the Swedish gallopers, who if they win a melee, get to follow up and fight again. One unit effectively wiped out two of my foot units.

I used a unit of trotters, who can roll for a caracole move, of moving half and then firing. Pike units can form a close order that gives them a melee bonus, but neither of us used this.

Another nice touch was the character traits of the commander. My friend rolled on the table and got a 'brutal' commander. His special trait was that if a unit failed a moral check, he could kill one of his men 'to encourage the others' and recover moral. It was really funny during our game because it saved his units several times.

Overall, another great game, and one we're looking to trying again with Great Northern War figures.

The inspiration of the game also saw my WoR figures getting moved on to paint trays. I'm going to try splash some more paint on them before the next game.